


La Belle Dame Sans Merci

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fallout Kink Meme, Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Kink Meme, Origin Myths, Sexual Violence, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Capital Wasteland may know her as the Saint from the Vault. The men of Talon Company call her La Belle Dame Sans Merci.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Belle Dame Sans Merci

**Author's Note:**

> In response to a prompt from the kink meme. Heavily inspired by mythology (duh) and the Keats poem 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' (also duh).

The world may know her as the saint from the Vault, but the men of Talon Company know her by another name—La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

It was started by Frags, the explosives expert of Dagon’s team. Shortly after being given the contract to take out the little gal from Vault 101, he and the rest of the men were poring over the attached picture and description. Laughing, sneering at the fresh-faced teenager, they thought she was easy prey and would fall apart like meat on the chopping block.

Only Frags had paused, looked at her portrait again, and chuckled darkly to himself. Frags is a strange man—unlike most of the mercenaries who spend their spare caps on booze and whores, he likes to buy Prewar books and read them. He has a little pair of silver-edged spectacles to use when reading, and even licks his finger before delicately turning the pages of these fragile tomes. Only once has someone made the mistake of thinking that ‘intellectual’ meant ‘weak,’ and tossed his precious book into a campfire. Frags had simply paused, looked him over, and chuckled darkly.

Then he proceeded to beat seventeen different kinds of shit out of the man, pulping him black and blue and bleeding. Then he had staked him out in the Wasteland and stuffed a grenade in his mouth, walking away calmly before the man’s head blew off. He never stopped chuckling.

So when he laughs like this, looking at the little girl’s picture, they think nothing of it. He murmurs, “Full beautiful she is; a fairy’s child.” The rest of Talon’s Company just assumes he has special plans for Little Miss One-oh-one.

When the first team attempts to bring her head… and never return… Frags just laughs a little more. He suggests the next team try using land mines, but Dagon’s team is not sent. Instead, it is Charlie’s team of men, a group of four who take along a Sentry bot for good measure. They also bring land mines.

They too fail to return. When Dagon’s team is sent to find what became of them, Frags pokes about the dirt, trying to see if any of the landmines were set off. Instead, he finds a small set of boot prints, footsteps light and barely skimming through the grit. They circle about various points in the ground—small, dug spots of earth—that could possibly have held landmines.

Frags just laughs louder. “Her foot was light.”

The rest of the men, finding the decaying corpses of their companions and the looted guts of the Sentry bot, find little to laugh at.

But Frags appears fascinated by the Vault girl. He constantly plays Galaxy News Radio, listening to Three Dog’s bombastic newscasts about her adventures. When the other mercenaries yell at him to change the station, he ignores them. When they accuse him of being in love with her, he just raises an eyebrow, and asks: “Why aren’t you?”

It is a good question. Every time she thwarts a hit squad, she earns a little more respect, grudging as it might be. It is a rare foe who can stand up to the might of the Talon Company, and a rarer one who does so while still looking so pretty in her warrants. Some of the men start boasting about what they would do if they are the ones to catch her, talking about how they would strip and brutalize her before firing a bullet to her brain. Some say they would prefer to shame and debase her, before snuffing her out like a candle.

Part of it is frustration, yes. Part of it is a desire to hurt the bitch who is killing so many of their men.

But for others, there is something more. Almost romantic, as Frags would say. In fact, it is Frags who silences one of the group of men who are talking about how they would gang rape the Lone Wanderer, and manages to put into words what so many are struggling with in their hearts.

“No. You do not _rape_ the embodiment of Death,” he says simply, and only because it is Frags—the man who can quietly chuckle as he beats a man to death, who can calmly stuff a live grenade down his victim’s throat and then go read a book of poetry—do people quiet down without him having to raise his voice. “She is Kali, avatar of change and destruction. She is Hecate, queen of darkness and mystery.”

Bones—one of the younger men, who prefers to use a close-quarters combat shotgun and views explosives as overcompensation—just snorts. “Her name is on the fucking warrants, genius.” The men around him quietly withdraw as Frags turns the weight of his gaze upon the young upstart, parting as surely as the Red Sea before Moses.

“There are names we are given, and names we earn… Leslie Mayers,” Frags says simply.

‘Bones’ sputters, turning red, and ducks his head in embarrassment.

“She is beautiful and without mercy,” Frags continues serenely, removing his glasses and carefully cleaning them with a handkerchief. “She is an artist with a weapon, and one I admire greatly. When our paths cross, I look forward to seeing how she paints the canvas.”

‘The woman without mercy’ seems a better title, one that is beautiful and elegant, much like her. Even those who have not faced her in battle have her features memorized, eyes staring coolly out from the crumpled warrants, challenging and accepting in equal measures.

When word trickles back that she has actually started donning the black and white armor of Talon Company, there is almost a holiday atmosphere to Fort Bannister. While there are definitely some who take offense at it (Jabsco included), claiming that she sullies the purpose of the mercenary group and dilutes the purity of their chaos, even more find a perverse joy that their adversary is wearing their own colors. It creates a strange sense of bonding, a kinship between the morally bankrupt Talons and the saintly Vault dweller. Much like using a Deathclaw’s hand as a melee weapon, the fact that she wears a trophy of the defeated brings honor to the vanquished.

Frags stares at her warrant with breathless lips, and gently kisses the paper. She is a manifestation of the divine, and he a worshipper at her altar of destruction. “La belle dame sans merci,” he whispers. Like sweet poison trickling through a wine bottle, it disperses amongst the other mercenaries. ‘The woman without mercy’ is poetic, yes, but easily understood. A foreign language, an exotic tongue, makes her even more mysterious and desirable at the same time. Because even as more of them die, cut down by her hunting rifle, her combat knife, and—on one memorable occasion discovered while searching for the bodies of the slain—even _teddy bears_ , her legend grows.

Rape and torture are too mundane now, something that Frags had been the first to understand. It is easy enough to rape a woman; how does one tame a temptress? Hold a hurricane? She is all that and more, and simply shoving a cock into her feels like defilement; not even the enjoyable sort.

Each man has their own version of the fantasy, but Frags is the only one to _understand_ his, to verbalize and conceptualize it, even if he never shares it. Some things are too sacred to profane with publicity.

The way he sees it, each culture has had their own version of Death, a concept of the end of life and the mother of suffering. Sex and death are inextricably linked, from the giggling titillation of Prewar horror films to the tales of ancient mythos, and a number of the deities and avatars of death are associated with femininity and beauty. Whether as destroyer or redeemer, he considers women to be uniquely linked to death, just as they are to creation.

The Capital Wasteland has been several centuries overdue for their own Lady of Death, by his reckoning.

And one does not simply _rape_ a legend. There must be a courtship of sorts involved; Herculean tasks for the sake of her pleasure, rites of passage before one can meet her in the arena and earn her favor. He has read her ‘Wasteland Survival Guide,’ and is impressed by her sparkling intellect. Meeting her—loving her—must be more than simply ambushing her outside an abandoned metro and throwing a plasma grenade while she is still blinking in the sunlight.

Instead, he fantasizes about meeting her outside her home in Megaton. He would approach her—charmingly, vivaciously—and speak with her. She must be a well-read woman, and perhaps they could discuss poetry and Prewar politics. Eventually, he might invite her to a game of chess, played slowly in a dimly lit saloon while sipping whiskey for him, wine for her. Regardless of who won, they would then retire to a bedroom and make love gently, languorously, where he would bring her to climax several times before finally permitting himself his own release. She would twine her fingers in his hair, whisper sweet, mad, frantic endearments, and he would spill his seed inside of her…

She would make sweet moan, but he will also dream of the many comrades she has already killed.

Their fragile bubble of lovemaking could not possibly last, of course. By morning, he would be forced by both honor and devotion to reveal his loyalties to Talon Company. They would fight, most likely; possibly she might even grant him the nicety of a duel.

And because this would be their own mythos, their own cultural genesis, he would be forced to kill the woman he loves.

And then he will follow La Belle Dame Sans Merci into death.


End file.
